Hi everyone, I am happy to introduce my friend, Vincent, the newest writer on TWG. We met through the SF Travel Hackers Meetup Group (now dormant) and we have stayed in touch over the years. Here is his first post. I hope you enjoy!

What’s it like taking American’s transcontinental A321T service in economy? It’s pretty good for domestic economy, there’s a responsive IFE, and they serve a complimentary cold meal.

A few weeks ago, I had the need to get back to the East Coast. Instead of flying my usual Southwest, I decided to work in American’s “premium” transcontinental service from SFO to JFK. I purchased the flight using my Chase Ink Business Preferred Credit Card to further progress on my minimum spend requirement, though I otherwise would have used my Chase Sapphire Reserve Credit Card for its useful travel benefits. (If you’re interested in these credit cards, I very much appreciate you using my referral links!)

I’m generally not a fan of red eyes as I get terrible sleep on them, but I can’t deny their utility. To my friends which travel frequently for work – or even leisure travelers with a specific schedule in mind – I can imagine them to be a godsend as they “save” an entire day. That is, you’re flying at night and not “wasting” the day.

Note: Since American calls “economy” and “economy-with-more-legroom,” “Main Cabin” and “Main Cabin Extra” respectively, I’ll be utilizing their naming convention for this post. But you’ll know it’s coach/economy.

A while back, I asked for advice about how to spend my time at Singapore Changi Airport. After all, it’s been the number one rated airport for many years and I wanted to find out for myself why. TWG readers are the best, and they offered me many great ideas. One reader, Donald, left a comment that I found intriguing.

He wrote, “You should visit the staff canteen. It’s where the airport workers get their meals–dirt cheap. It’s where you can really get the local experience and eat authentic local food prepared by and served to locals. It’s open to the public so you can sit shoulder to shoulder with baggage handlers and flight attendants while you enjoy your meal together. Skip all that silly stuff (butterfly garden, free movies, etc). This is the true insider experience for travelers.” Continue reading →

Good afternoon everyone. My friend, Greg, just launched a new Kickstarter campaign to help people make private phone calls wherever they are (office, airport, loud public place, etc.). Check out the video to see how the Bloxvox works. If you are interested in funding the Kickstarter campaign, click here.

Would you buy, wear, or use Bloxvox? Please let me know what you think below. Have a great day everyone!

When you travel a lot, like most of us do, you may have a hard time keeping track of all your different account balances, payments received and checks posting etc. Combine that with multiple accounts, each bank has a different app with unique passwords, you’re outside of the USA so some don’t work without VPN and the tasks can be time consuming and frustrating. I use a service that helps track all your financial accounts and presents them to you in one convenient dashboard. Once set up, the service updates your checking, savings, credit card, investment, retirement, and HSA accounts periodically so the totals and transactions are all displayed when you login to their app or website.

Personal Capital

I have used Personal Capital for years and think you may enjoy it as well. You can sign up for free, and there is no ongoing subscription costs to use the service. Of course, they also sell financial planning services and would like to talk to you about their products, but no purchase is necessary. Personal Capital has all the security features you would expect like second factor authentication by text, email, etc and they also identify login by browser so you can see which browsers have logged on and delete those you don’t want to allow access anymore. If you sign up using my link, we will both get $20 from Personal Capital.

Updated at 6am PT on 5/22: I just wanted to update this post and let readers know that the $10 bill pay bonus posted. I made bill payments on 4/9, 4/16, and 4/16; and received the $10 bonus on 5/15. It looks like the bonus posts 1 month after completing the requirements or on the 15th of the following month. If you have any data points, please leave a comment below. Now, if only the sign up bonus would post to my Bank of the West checking account…

Good afternoon everyone, I hope your weekend is going well. I just logged into my Bank of the West checking account and saw this promotion. You can get a $10 bonus when you make 3 bill payments within 90 days of account opening. I signed up for a Bank of the West checking account last month for their $150 bank account bonus, so I am within the first 90 days of account opening. Bank of the West ran similar promotions in March 2017 and again in August 2017.